Pumpkin pie lifts the gloom

The gloomy weather continued on Monday without the slightest hint of any sunshine. It was dry and a little cooler than the last few days. It’s rather odd that such lousy weather is producing such a mild November. It’s not due to any especially good daytime weather more the fact that overnight temperatures are almost the same as daytime temperatures due to the thick blanket of never ending cloud.

I decided to use one of our Crown Prince squashes to make a pumpkin pie, something we had never made before. There are plenty of recipes on the Internet but many use tinned pumpkin and shop bought pastry. A combination of a BBC Good Food and Jamie Oliver recipes gave me enough of an idea what to do.

The Crown Prince had been stored in the greenhouse and was in excellent conditions. The squash was cut up and roasted in the oven. There was plenty of uncooked squash left over which I've frozen to use later. I've no idea if it’s possible to freeze squash but I’ll find out now.

Cutting up the squash is certainly the difficult bit. It was just a matter of blind baking the pastry case, making the filling and cooking for 45 minutes. The end result was certainly different but very tasty. It still seems a little odd using a vegetable - although botanically it is a fruit -even though I know it’s a very sweet one to make a dessert.